List of States Games
There are a variety of different City-States style games. City-States (Original) The first in the series of City-States games. Hosted by Demonsul, it brought the idea to prominence, and spawned a string of similar games. Ended abruptly due to the fact that its popularity caught Demonsul off-guard, and the system he was using to run the back-end of the game was woefully unprepared for this. The length of time it ran for has yet to be matched by any other States game. City-States 2 Demonsul hosted this soon after ending CS1. Still in it's early stages, although it endures a long period of silence while Demonsul is temporarily unable to GM it. It ended due to needing work in the backend. Heirs of Perdition: In the Shadows of History The first non-Demonsul City-States game, this game was launched and run by Galloglasses. It's updates are unparalleled in how long they took to complete. It was abandoned due to a lack of interest, possibly caused by this, along with how far apart everyone was. Gods, Guts and Glory - A Tale of the Hebrides The second Galloglasses States game, this one is famed for its huge number of starting players and bloody revolution period. There were 15 player nations surviving as of the end of the Revolution with a small number of player characters. The game ended after not much happened. Politico Formless Fable's foray into States games, this game focuses less on individual rulership, instead opting to put focus on parliamentary proceedings and elections. Munda Nova Munda Nova is a States game by Demonsul. It revolves around governors of colonies on a new continent. The game revolves around the yearly management of colonies, and is the first Demonsul states game to feature the direct allocation of funds. There is an explorer portion of the game run by a mysterious co-GM. By Any Means Necessary BAMN is a post-apocalyptic dieselpunk states game run by Galloglasses. A core feature holds that the locations of all players are hidden from each other until they are found through exploration. Cyclical History Cyclical History is a Bronze/Iron Age States game run by Kaynato. Others There are some others which we're not exactly sure if they count for various reasons. Elysium A space-age States-like game by Qeztotz, planned but canceled before it started. Nations (Pagan) Nobody is really sure about this one. Strategy: Continental Conquest A game focused purely on the military side of gameplay, somewhat like the campaign map side of a Total War game. Planned by Rufus. Can Into Space A business/colonization game, based on the events of CS1. History of the Game Style The original City-States was not completely innovative - it was heavily based on a previous game Demonsul participated in, the Nations RP hosted by Kesteven. However, the idea is inevitably older, and probably came from somewhere. Sasflow, also by Demonsul, had the idea even earlier, but could not get any interest whatsoever in it. Due to how long ago that was and Demonsul's GMing skill at the time, that may have been a good thing. Generally the style and flow of states games has evolved along certain paramters and the game has allowed for a wide variety of GMing styles and back game management. GGG for example in contrast to citystates 1 and 2, has a very simplified economic and tax management system running in the background in order to allow for efficient updating time scheduale in order to satisfy the large number of players, whereas Citystates more in depth economic back game allows for much more specific player actions and is better suited for 'hard reality' states games. Successful games are almost never possible right off the bat, prospective states GMs have almost universally failed miserably at hosting their first states game but have made a better second attempt. This phenomena is known as Crash and Burn training or in a phrase 'Learning to fall off the shoulders of giants before standing on them'. Kaynato's game; Cyclical History, the second game after GGG to have such a huge playerbase attempted to buck the trend by having a very organised and automated backgame while allowing for freeform player styles, though still requiring a lot of GM maintainence. Because of that, Cyclical History died a very quick death. FIrst game syndrome? Player overload? The world will never know.